Unleashing the Power of Hall Passes: Making New Habits Stick

I am an all-or-nothing kind of person. While I was writing the first draft of the manuscript for The Health Habit, I wrote 1000 words per day every single day until it was done. Even while on a five-day holiday in sunny Noosa, I still wrote 1000 words a day. And I say this not to brag about my dedication to the craft of writing (although when on deadline, yes, I am very dedicated), but rather to demonstrate how all-or-nothing I am. To perhaps quite a ridiculous degree.

But here’s the problem with being like me: if sh*t happens, as it so often does, it’s easy to fall off the habit wagon. You might be trying to start a daily morning meditation habit, but if you have a sick kid who snuck into your bed at 3 am and sneezed and coughed in your face until your alarm went off at 6 am, that plan is probably going to go out the window when your morning starts with trying to wash snot off your bedsheets (along with comforting said snot monster too, of course).

It’s surprising how demotivating missing one morning can be; it’s easy to give up. The perfectionist self-talker in you is not only berating you but also saying that you’re unable to stick to a meditation habit; so rather than fail, it’s best to revert to being a non-meditating stress-head. Even though your stress levels may increase, at least you won’t be a failure.

Psychologists have a name for this: they call it the ‘What the hell’ effect. It’s been studied a lot in the context of health, especially in people trying to lose weight.

Imagine you are on a restrictive eating plan and you’re existing on boiled chicken and broccoli and not much else. One evening, you see your partner crack open a block of creamy chocolate and you can’t take it anymore. You. Must. Eat. The. Chocolate.

You break off a square.

And then another one.

And another.

Until there is no more block.

You then stop and reflect on your behaviour and think to yourself, Well, I’ve already broken my diet. What the hell, I may as well keep eating whatever I want. And then it’s bye-bye to any other errant blocks of chocolate and non-diet-friendly food. And of course, it’s also bye-bye diet.

Associate Professor John Beshears from Harvard Business School led research investigating the impact of having a strict exercise routine versus a flexible one on how often people visit the gym. The researchers partnered with Google, where offices typically have an onsite gym, making it easy to measure gym attendance.

More than 2000 Googleers took part in the study. Some of the employees were assigned to be Routine Rachels and some Flexible Fernandos (as Professor Katy Milkman, one of the co-authors, affectionately referred to them).

The Routine Rachels were given a small financial incentive to visit the gym during a specific 2-hour window, while the Flexible Fernandos were incentivised for doing a workout at the gym at any time.

Imagine you are a 6 am gym-goer. Now, let’s say you have a late night out with some work mates. The following morning, your 5.30 am alarm goes off (time to get dressed for the gym!), but you hit snooze and end up sleeping until 7 am. If 6 am is your exercise time, it becomes really easy to say to yourself, Oh well, I’ve missed my workout window, I’ll get back on track next week. You’ve essentially built an all-or-nothing routine.

In contrast, if you’re a Flexible Fernando and you have a sleep-in, it doesn’t matter – your routine isn’t rigid. You can just go to the gym at lunch or after work instead. It’s a no-matter-what routine instead of an all-or-nothing one. Flexibility creates robustness which makes the routine easier to stick to.

The results of the Flexible Fernandos exercising more regularly compared to the Routine Rachels continued after the experiment was over, even though they were no longer receiving financial incentives. It turns out that flexibility is powerful when it comes to building new routines.

Another way to look at flexibility is not about time of day, but instead about regularity of behaviour. There is a reason cheat days are so popular (and by some accounts, very effective) when you are on a diet. Ironically, being given permission to break your routine makes you more likely to stick to it.

Assistant Professor Marissa Sharif from Wharton and Professor Suzanne Shu from UCLA looked at the impact of having ‘emergency reserves’ (i.e. a hall pass) on helping people feel more committed to a goal in the face of mini-failures. Two hundred and seventy-three university staff and students were set a daily steps target (calculated at 120 per cent more than what they would normally walk). Some people were given two hall passes per week, meaning they were allowed to skip hitting their step goal twice a week. Others did not have this luxury and were expected to hit their goal every single day for one month.

The researchers also found that people in the hall pass group were more likely to reach their step goal the day after they had failed to hit it. In other words, having the hall pass up their sleeve made them more persistent in the face of a small failure or setback towards their monthly goal.

In another experiment conducted by the same researchers, they found that people who have a hall pass demonstrate the same level of persistence after a failure or a success (e.g. hitting one’s daily step target), which suggests that the hall pass strategy helps people sustain their level of effort, both after a setback or a win.

In a paper titled ‘The benefits of behaving badly on occasion’ (how could you resist reading that one), Associate Professor Rita Coelho do Vale from the Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics and her colleagues followed a group of people on a diet for two weeks. One cohort was allowed to have a cheat day once a week, while the other group did not have such good fortune. Those who were in the cheat day group lost just as much weight as those with no reprise from the diet. In addition, their motivation was higher and they found the diet more enjoyable.

I began this chapter by bragging about my ability to write 1000 words per day every day. No hall passes needed here. But then, rather ironically, as I was in the middle of writing this chapter on hall passes, I received a call from my daughter’s school saying she was feeling unwell and I needed to pick her up immediately. Needless to say, my focus was out of whack for the rest of the day. It was the first time that I didn’t hit my 1000-word target since setting the goal. The perfectionist in me hated this fact, but instead I just gave myself a hall pass and the following day I was able to easily hit my daily target.

Put it into action

1. Set a month-long goal for yourself in relation to your Health Habit. You might commit to doing it daily for thirty days. For example, you will only use your bed for sleep and sex for the next month.

2. Define your hall pass, which might be the freedom to miss the goal on two occasions per week. (The research cited in this chapter suggests that twice per week is a sufficient amount.)

3. If you are tracking your progress visually, such as using a streak board (see page 154), make your hall passes visual too. They might be a ticket-shaped piece of paper that says Hall Pass, for example.

4. On days where you fail to hit your goal, stick your hall pass where you are tracking your progress. Or you can just say to yourself that it’s a hall pass day. By using this strategy, you’ll continue to stride towards your goal even in the face of the occasional (and inevitable) setback. In addition, having hall passes should give you more confidence in setting an ambitious goal, because you know you have a buffer.

Today’s post is an extract from my new book The Health Habit (out now!) Thank you to all the subscribers who have already purchased a copy - your support means the world to me.